davidphogan:I'm sitting at a bar next to a creationist as I post this. A real living creationist in Portland. Obviously I'm getting a kick out of that headline, and half tempted to use it to start an argument.

Descended from an ancestor to modern rats, of course. We're both mammals, we have a common ancestor someplace, only issue is how far back down the tree. Certainly way before we and the other current primates diverged.

thermo:davidphogan: I'm sitting at a bar next to a creationist as I post this. A real living creationist in Portland. Obviously I'm getting a kick out of that headline, and half tempted to use it to start an argument.

thermo:davidphogan: I'm sitting at a bar next to a creationist as I post this. A real living creationist in Portland. Obviously I'm getting a kick out of that headline, and half tempted to use it to start an argument.

How do you know he's a creationist, is he wearing a sign?

He told me last time we talked. Really nice guy, but he was really offended I don't agree with him and want really interested in reading the multiple books he swore would convince me.

Yeah and we were all reptiles before that, and fish before that and sea cucumbers before that and strands of RNA before that. The creationists have a lot of things to feel uncomfortable about descending from after apes.

dehehn:Old enough to know better: Humans, and every other mammal species. Duh.

Yeah and we were all reptiles before that, and fish before that and sea cucumbers before that and strands of RNA before that. The creationists have a lot of things to feel uncomfortable about descending from after apes.

They tell us thatwe lost our tailsevolving upfrom little snailsI think it's alljust wind and sailsare we not men?We are Devo

You mean "apes" didn't spontaneously just appear out of thin farking air but instead evolved from even more primal mammals themselves? Color me farking shocked! Stupid that people never considered that possibility before!

It doesn't bother me in the least to find out what I desended from. I am comfortable enough with who I am that I don't need to have a "skyman" to have created me. I just don't care. If you need a god to have created you in order to feel justified, then you're weak. Who cares? You are now, isn't that good enough? I would rather have a monkey or slime mold be my recent ancestor than a republican. Those farkers are just evil.(I'm not a democrat.)

"Descended from?" "Evolved from?" Bullshiat, we are rats. We eat anything we lay our paws on, despoil everything around us, kill each other in large numbers for no reason whatsoever, and there are over 7 billion of us - constantly gnawing, biting, scratching, killing, infecting, and breeding. How are we not rats?

davidphogan:I'm sitting at a bar next to a creationist as I post this. A real living creationist in Portland. Obviously I'm getting a kick out of that headline, and half tempted to use it to start an argument.

I deal with a petroleum engineer on pretty regular basis who is a young Earth creationist. The mental gymnastics performed by this dude is astounding.

Me: "What's so bad about being descended from apes? How do you know that wasn't God's plan?"

Creationist: "Because being descended from apes deprecates the value of human life; they are making us out to be animals. That's why I believe in the story of Genesis literally."

Me: "But in Genesis, God said, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return'. Does it really deprecate human life more to be descended from apes than it does to be descended from dust?"

Creationist: "...."

But seriously, setting aside the religion chat, this is a pretty cool story. Mammal relationships has really been a sticky point for a long time and this isn't going to make it any better. More accurate, but also more sticky, since it refutes a lot of common knowledge.

Me: "What's so bad about being descended from apes? How do you know that wasn't God's plan?"

Creationist: "Because being descended from apes deprecates the value of human life; they are making us out to be animals. That's why I believe in the story of Genesis literally."

Me: "But in Genesis, God said, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return'. Does it really deprecate human life more to be descended from apes than it does to be descended from dust?"

Creationist: "...."

But seriously, setting aside the religion chat, this is a pretty cool story. Mammal relationships has really been a sticky point for a long time and this isn't going to make it any better. More accurate, but also more sticky, since it refutes a lot of common knowledge.

This is new news? I remember back when the Discovery channel actually showed educational programming, they had a program that showed the Chicxulub Asteroid striking the earth, with tiny mammals in burrows surviving.

Philbb:I guess it's nice to know which ancient rat we descended from, but I thought we already knew that all mammals came from some small rat-like creature that survived the dinosaur extinction event.

Not really.

Well, first of all, all mammals came from a more-reptile-like ancestor in the early Triassic. This study wasn't looking at that, though.

If you throw out marsupials and platypi, and just look at placental mammals, then this is big news. It was believed that the placental mammals started diverging from a common ancestor 100 mya, but this new study suggests that is was only 60 mya. This disagrees with theories on how fast DNA changes. There might be some wider implications there. And it suggests that dinosaur extinction was what gave mammals the opportunity to occupy the large land animal niche.

Creationist: I did not come from a monkey!Scientist: No, you and monkeys share a common ancestor.Creationist: I'm not a monkey!Scientist: No, you're a subspecies of ape.Creationist: Do I look like a chimpanzee?Scientist: Well, yeah, just with less hair and longer legs.Creationist: I am not a monkey's uncle!Scientist: Look, I'm trying to explain this-Subby: Hey! We're descended from rats!Creationist: RARScientist: Goddamnit.